winter

[miller]

hi i am new to narrowboats this was my first season what are the dos and donts re mooring up over winter?

[John Orentas]

Geoff.

 

Traditionally people used to lay up their boats, I have seen press articles give guidance on what to do, some of them quite extreme, drain this, drain that, take your batteries home! One even said take out all your injectors and squirt some oil into the bores (that's nonsense).

 

I favour doing the bare minimum and keep your boat 'alive' for the winter, a keel cooled engine needs only the normal maintenance, just make sure there is plenty of anti-freeze in the coolant. Obviously the domestic water system may need draining down depending on what sort of equipment you have but you don't need to go to the lengths of draining the water tank, that will never freeze anyway.

 

There is no reason why the boat cannot be use right through the winter especially as we seem to have very mild ones now but in any event visit the boat every 2 or 3 weeks, run the engine get the heating going and generally keep things working.

[Paul Evans]

Try these forum topics for more advice and discussion:

1. Winter and Water Freezing

2. Water Tank - Dewinterising

3. Overwintering

As usual you will find a wide range of advice (some conflicting) and opinions. Generally, I go with John O's approach but I find monthly visits to the boat are more than enough to keep it going. And when you do visit it, don't just run up the engine - go out for a few hours. Winter cruising can be remarkably exhilarating and with the trees bare you see a lot of things that are hidden in the warmer months.

[DHutch]

Other than the engine/boilers stuff we do, basicaly all we do is open all the taps, shut of the the tap on the bottom of the water tank (just incase a low-leval pipe freezes) and drain the palamo (this is quite sensotive and the first to freeze).

- The radiators all have antifreeze

- The watertank and colorifyer dont freeze.

- The water pipes, that runs along the baseplate, dont freeze.

 

- And we go atleast once a month to check everything, and to charge the batterys for an hour of the mains (or genny)

 

 

Daniel